Re: AE RAMKEEPER

[shack@onyx.southwind.net (Randy Shackelford)]

Nathan Mates (nathan@visi.com) wrote:

[snip]

:    On a ROM 01 machine, the RAM5 disk is created/resized only at
: poweron or at the end of a selftest. [ROM 3 boxen can resize/recreate
: it on a reboot if the appropriate text control panel option is
: selected] While the system can easily manage to put a ProDOS
: filesystem header on /RAM5 to make it a disk, for some very obscure
: reason, Apple never made that disk bootable by default-- forcing you
: to initialize it from a disk utilities program, *then* copying boot
: files onto it. [If they made it so that you can select RAM5 as a boot
: device, then it should be functional after copying boot files, no
: extra step of formatting.]

Not so. You only need to write the boot code to block zero on the RAM disk
to make it bootable, not reformat it. I wrote a TIF that writes the boot
code to the RAM disk's block zero if it isn't already there. It also sets
the RAM disk creation date/time to the current date/time if it isn't set.
That's handy for telling how long your machine has been on. 

I put the same functionality in a homemade SYS program which my //e boots 
into and is the app I run whenever I run 8 bit stuff on my IIgs. Additionally 
it disconnects the 5.25 drives and 64K RAM disk and lets me choose between two
program selectors by using the option key.
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